Actually it was. Seeing it via a plain pinhole in paper is not easy; there are much better ways, but my astronomy stuff is all packed up. I jury-rigged a chair, a table, a magazine, a sheet of paper with a pinhole, a big box, a small box, and more sheets of paper, closed all the blinds I could, and finally convinced myself I saw a definite spot in a certain location, just before the sun went behind the neighboring building. I was able to map the projected location of the dot onto an equatorial map of the sun's disk, and match it up to NASA's predicted position, correcting for UT/PDT, confirming the observation.

Or you could just hold up some glass with optical density 5 or so and look through it.

In the story, the NPR reporter states that Yohannes Keppler predicted the transit of venus in December 1631, but died a year before he could see it. Jeremiah Horrocks saw it, then predicted and saw the followup transit of 1639, but died less than 2 years later. The reporter goes on to state: "lest you think the transit is bad luck, plenty of others have watched since then with no apparent ill effects. In fact…the transits of 1761 and 1769 drew a huge following."

Well, it is a known fact that every single individual who witnessed the transits in 1631, 1639, 1761 and 1769 is DEAD.

Doing a little research on the internet, I found that there were also transits in 1874 and 1882. Guess what? Yep. All the witnesses are DEAD.

Not bad luck? I don't think so.

I fear for those who witnessed today's transit, as well as those who saw it in 2004. I fear deeply. This will not turn out well.